Introducing Office Web App Integration with Outlook Web App in Exchange Online

[The_Exchange_Team]

On the Exchange team, it’s always important to us to get feedback from our customers on what we’re doing well and what we could be doing to make the experience better for you. In Exchange 2007, in response to one of the biggest Exchange 2003 OWA feature requests, we introduced WebReady Document Viewing. This let OWA users preview attached Microsoft Office documents and PDFs in a web browser without having to save them to disk or open them in a locally-installed application. We continued to offer this functionality in Exchange 2010, but we received a lot of feedback that text and formatting of Office documents were sometimes not the same as the original document when viewed in the desktop Office client applications.

We’re excited to announce an update to OWA in Exchange Online that now integrates the Office Web Apps into the attachment previewing experience for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files! Along with continued PDF support, this means Exchange Online users get high-fidelity previews of Office documents on the web, in exactly the same format they were created. WebReady Document Viewing is perfect for quick document previews and if you need to edit a document you can easily open the file in your desktop Office client from the Office Web App through a single click.

Click on the “Open in browser” link you see next to Office document attachments to start using this feature in Exchange Online today!

David Alexander, Kartik Murthy

[#2]

Ahaha, I just used this function in the first time I used OWA. Fun to know I used it day 1 of the feature!

[#3]

How can we configure this for Exchange 2010 on premise in combination with SP 2010 with webapps?

[#4]

Ok, I love this.  But why can I not edit in Word Web App ?

[#5]

Any Change of getting this functionality added to Exchange On prem?... being able to open docs and save to SharePoint would be awesome!

[#6]

Will this feature also be available in on promise deployments?

Will we see a possibility to create documents with Office WebApps in the future?

[#7]

Good point.

[#8]

@ Steven, Dr.NO1, and Jeremy: editing in the Office Web App previews and bringing this functionality to on-premises Exchange customers are two great evolutions for our team to consider for future releases. However, we have no information to share at this

point about specific plans or timeline.

@ Rikard: most Office 365 plans allow customers to view, share, create, and edit documents with the Office Web Apps today. You can access this by going to the Team Site from your Office 365 Home page. Feel free to check out additional information:

www.microsoft.com/.../web-apps.aspx

[#9]

Regarding Jeremy's question: "But why can I not edit in Word Web App?"

The Office Web Apps in Exchange are "viewers", as stated in the second paragraph of the post above:

   "...Exchange Online that now integrates the Office Web Apps into the attachment previewing experience..."

Note the phrase "previewing experience".  To edit, you need to either upload the document to your SharePoint Online site and edit it there, or, download and edit in the rich client.

[#10]

Regarding Rikard's question: "Will we see a possibility to create documents with Office WebApps in the future?"

You can already do this.  

In SharePoint Online you do this in one of the following ways...

 - Click on the "Home" link at the top of the screen... you should see links to the 4 Web Apps, clicking

    them will allow you to create the documents online.

or

 - Go to one of the Document Libraries in your site

 - Click on the Documents Tab in the ribbon at the top of the webpage, below the Office 365 icon

 - Click on the New Document drop down, and select the Web Application Document type you want to create.

[#11]

David,

I manage Outlook Live/Exchange Online using the current educational offering, Live@edu. At some point Live@edu will be moving over to the Office 365 for Education offering (haven't heard yet when). Do you know if the Office Web Apps integration is also coming to Live@edu or will we have to wait until we are moved over into the Office 365 for Edu offering?

Thanks!

[#12]

@Jared: Office Web App integration for attachment previewing has been rolled out to OWA for Live@edu tenants as well as Office 365 tenants. Live@edu tenants will continue to have this functionality when they are moved over to Office 365 for Education. We have no news to announce about that move at this time.

[#13]

why my company is going google....

"Note the phrase "previewing experience".  To edit, you need to either upload the document to your SharePoint Online site and edit it there, or, download and edit in the rich client."

I hope someone pulls their collective head out before I have to convert all my docs to google. As a user, I do not care if its Exchange or Office Web or SharePoint...each silo is killing MSFT's ability to deliver....flatten it all into a Collaboration Suite and re-architect it from the ground up...none of this hodge podge approach.